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How is the government preventing companies from competing with telecomms?

You can't legally broadcast on the 850, 900, etc. bands without a license to do so (at least you can't broadcast with any significant amounts of power.) The licenses are handed out by the FCC and are so expensive to obtain (and so selectively distributed) that you have a snowball's chance in hell of getting one.

Verizon posted $1.64 billion profits last quarter. Their radio licensing cost them about 20 million for a 5 year period. Huge profit potential here for them. My question is why aren't there more entrepreneurs in this booming industry?

The radio license for 800mhz is available to anyone who is willing to pay for the licensing. Licensing is an important part of the FCC, and avoids chaos. Right now it costs about 1.6 million per 5khz block of 800mhz.

Have you ever wondered what the FCC does with this money? They self-sustain themselves, instead of being a leech of taxpayer money. How else would you employ a radio engineer to track down violations of spectrum, misuses, misconfigurations, and enforce the laws?

If the FCC made no profit, then you and me could jam the public safety frequencies with little repercussion. Without radio engineers to track illegal signals, what could they do?

They couldn't file new licenses. You have to survey an area to coordinate frequencies with other nearby license holders to ensure no interference. The FCC needs radio engineers to do that. It wouldn't get that far though, since they couldn't afford the paper pushers to file the paperwork in the first place.

Besides, if anyone could put up cellular equipment for about $1 a year licensing, the 800mhz spectrum would be full before the days end. Cellular transceivers work on a limited range of frequencies. There's a finite amount of usable radio spectrum available.

Different parts of the spectrum have different valuable characteristics. Once someone has been granted a license, it's hard to re-purpose that part of the spectrum or get them to give the spectrum back. (VHF is good for close communication, HF good for long range, SHF and Microwave good for data, etc.)

Without the FCC and in a truly free market, the HF, VHF, UHF, SHF and EHF part of the spectrum would be an unusable babble of radio transmissions competing on the strongest signal. You'd have to push kilowatts of power before you could be heard over such chatter.

Ever wonder how your house can have 3 cell phones, 3 cordless phones and 15 wireless accessories work together?

They're made to negotiate for an open part of the spectrum. Not all devices can do this. Not all services can either. There are thousands of analog services still in existence that cannot handshake to find the most convenient frequency.

It isn't the FCC that's helping this situation, it is manufacturers working with one another so they can all compete.

All this is documented in standards by the FCC.

E.G. Wifi is made standardized by Part 15 and 90. Linksys, Negear use it because they have to follow the standard; interconnectivity results.

Every device you buy has to be part certified so they don't kill other devices. This is so your microprocessor in your MP3 player doesn't leak 900mhz killing your cell conversation.

I doubt Apple/Ipod would care if the design of their product leaked some 1.4ghz through the monophone jack. It would be no concern of theirs if this leakage disrupted wireless cameras occupying 1.4ghz. The FCC makes them care, by not allowing sale of their product without first ensuring Type compliance.

If some large radio tower company wanted to block EVERY FREQUENCY for hundreds of miles, do you know how much it would cost them? Look at just the FM radio spectrum -- they couldn't afford it. A 50,000 watt radio station broadcasting at one tiny sliver of a frequency has a HUGE electric bill.

Sure that'd never happen. The costs would be monumental; with no profit for being such an ass. (See subnote)

However, say they want to create a radio service using single sideband waveform. They find that 1.4ghz fits their radio requirements perfectly (best spectral characteristics for propagation in a hilly area). They start up at 2500 watts. Turns out wireless phones use 1.4 ghz too. It knocks out every wireless phone for about 500 miles; because they're basic digital devices susceptible to the analog interference.

The company doesn't give a shit, nor should they; there's no FCC. The phone users can't do anything to compete against a 2500 watt signal with their 0.1 watt phones. What do they do?

2500 kHz - WWV transmitting at 2500 watts. Location: Colorado. I hear this station loud and clear in Dallas TX.

It doesn't always take much power to reach far away places.

Subnote: Though it wouldn't be so hard. The hardest part would be antenna tuning. You could build a dirty transmitter pretty cheaply that would splatter a carrier all over the commercial FM band. It's just the effective radiated power would go to shit once the frequency was getting outside of your antennas resonant frequency.

The market would find a way to police itself of this, because if they didn't, no one would be able to operate worth a damn.

This is the tragedy of the commons argument rehashed, with the ultimate conclusion on the part of statists to simply say, the entity with a monopoly on force is the one best suited to regulate it.

Any number of institutions could attempt to be a mediator for all of them, and, given time, they would realize how ridiculous it was that none of them could, so they'd agree to work with each other. Additionally, demand for new entrepreneurs would push into high spectrums much quicker, making higher gigahertz devices cheaper sooner.

I think the frequency blocks should be distributed for seven-year terms through staggered auctions.

The prices would be higher than now, but a company would never bid more than it was worth to them. This would also encourage companies to more efficiently use their bandwidth, or more appropriately increase their bandwidth per frequency block.

so, who has the right to call themselves the owner? The first squatter?

Under cases of private and real property, the first right of ownership generally goes to the first occupant (note I did not say squatter, to be squatting there must be a previous legitimate occupant).

But the spectrum is neither private nor real property. I'm not talking about legal definitions here, rather I am referring to things as they are in nature.

I tell you, I am not sure how best to allocate the spectrum, because it is a function of both frequency band, selectivity of transceivers, and distance. But putting people in jail for transmitting radio waves is violence and it is just wrong.

I do know that collective private agreement does work and I can quote at least one example of it working: WiFi.

The government is a useful proxy for the people you exclude.

The government is not a proxy for the people you exclude, man. The government is a proxy for the people in power. And, again, no special class of people has the right to ownership of abundant resources.

What you say is true, but what do you propose to do about it? If everyone were allowed to use the bandwidth willy-nilly then it would become useless for this kind of data transmission. If they were to give away a small number of licenses cheaply then it would effectively be a massive gift to a selected group of people.

The frequencies should be privately owned. If the owner of that frequency goes broke for whatever reason, he can sell it to another party who will use the frequency more productively.

Just think about private land ownership. If you own a piece of land, and you go broke, you sell it to someone else, and you move to a smaller piece of land by buying it from someone who wants to sell. Those who are the most productive own the most land.

Same thing with frequencies. If anyone who owns a frequency through their firm or whatever goes broke, then someone else buys it and utilizes the frequency in their business. Best user wins.

It would be the task of government to protect the property rights of those who own the frequency should anyone else broadcast in the area of interest and cause interference, much like a movie theater owner's rights are protected from any patron who is audibly disturbing other movie patrons.

I don't agree. The airwaves are a public good owned by the citizens of the US. They should not be sold off to private enterprise because let's get real, they won't go to private entrepreneurs, they would go to large corporations.

Government leases spectrum to companies. In most cases government will allow a lessee to auction off rights to spectrum for whatever reason (bankruptcy or disinterest or whatever) as long as the spectrum will be utilized in a way already authorized by the lease.

I can see an argument that no requirement for specific usage (as long as they are utilized) should be attached to the lease. But you have to weigh that with the fact a necessary or highly desired service (like TV or mobile phone) might not be available in an area because a leasee (or buyer) discovered a more profitable use for the spectrum.

I don't agree. The airwaves are a public good owned by the citizens of the US.

Then why aren't all of us profiting from its use? Ownership implies being the actual receiver of payoffs.

The fact is that radio waves cannot be a "public good". Nothing can be a public good. Everything has to be controlled and managed by someone. Everything has a payoff stream that goes to someone. These people are the actual owners.

They should not be sold off to private enterprise because let's get real, they won't go to private entrepreneurs, they would go to large corporations.

So?

Government leases spectrum to companies.

But you said the public owns the spectrum. If the government leases the rights to use it, then obviously the government owns the spectrum, not the people. If the people owned the spectrum, then they would decide who gets to use it and on what terms. I am a part of the public, and I was never asked or approached by anyone regarding how the spectrum gets utilized.

What's that? You believe in the naive notion that "we" are the government? That the public is represented by the government? If that were true, why does the government always seem to do things that the public does not want them to do?

The government is made up of self-interested individuals. They are not there to help you. They are there to benefit some people at the expense of other people. It is impossible for the government to benefit everyone in the public.

With the radio spectrum issue, the government benefits some people at the expense of other people too. The FCC has a whole list of do's and don'ts, and these rules are there so that the people at the FCC and their friends benefit, at the expense of the taxpayer, and those who cannot use the radio spectrum because of they are a threat to the government's ideologies.

You seem to be either trolling or so far anti-establishment I doubt we can have a constructive discussion. I am in fact libertarian. I voted for Ron Paul. But even I see a place for government in our lives as sometimes it is the only practical device we have to prevent wonton anarchy not beneficial to our social or economic system.

We profit from our use of the airwaves every day in our actual use of services that arrive over them, and in lower taxes funded by lease payments. Maybe we don't profit as much as we should, but you can't say we don't gain benefit from them.

A public good means the asset is managed by the government for the collective citizen owners by implicit authorization of the people allowing themselves to be governed. It is no different than socialism on a narrow scale.

Government abuses our trust because bureaucrats are just fallible people. We as citizens don't have the necessary attention span, civic education, and volunteer our time and money, and risk our safety when necessary to correct the abuses in government. What happened during the Bush Admin is case in point. We can only blame ourselves for the bad behavior of our government.

The USA has a romantic notion of small private entrepreneurs encouraging radical change in our economy and technology. Corporations frequently try to block change because they see it as a threat to their established economic order.

What part is circular? Grandparent suggests private property rights for airwaves, I suggest airwaves are a public good owned collectively by the citizens of the US, but shouldn't be subdivided therefrom. Distinct ideas in economic theory, though you can argue which one is more efficient or has a better outcome.

WIFI and UWB contradict your very claim that they support free use of spectrum. They are a small sliver of the spectrum the government allows transmission on at very low power through a device license granted solely to the manufacturer (and not required for the end user.) CB radio is now another example of this.

They marginally work because of the very low power and limited range. The device must by law tolerate interference and there is no legal recourse if someone is overlapping your signal. In congested environments (like large cities in New York and California) some WIFI users can't reliably get a connection to their access point because everyone in their apartment complex is already using all the available WIFI channels.

The laws in place don't limit someone from entering the telecommunication industry. They limit the way wireless is used so services reliably work. Anyone could open Mobile-Phones-R-US and re-let spectrum from an incumbent player, or use an unlicensed band like WiFi and set up thousands of access points in the city.

Success is in the eye of the beholder. WiFi has its good and bad points as I pointed out earlier. I agree we should open up more of the spectrum to unlicensed uses, but where I might double or triple the amount, it sounds like you would prefer most of it to be unlicensed. That isn't a world I'd like to live in. There would be plenty of negative consequences to go along with the new innovative and positive uses.

The reason you haven't seen M-P-R-Us install a bazillion unlicensed access points to provide citywide voice/data coverage, or set up peering agreements with the many already deployed access points, is because it is a horrendously inefficient way to broadcast data over a wide area.

Actually, it is due the way SMS messages are sent. Your phone communicates information about itself to your phone company. This like if it is currently making a call, recieving a call, on a call, and its location so that you are communicating with the best possible tower for your location. There are other things too, but all of this is communicated via a "command channel." This channel has very little bandwidth because all of its communication is very short and sweet. In fact, it was designed so that the largest transmission could only be 1.25 Kb (1380 bits). At some point it was realized that as long as the message was within that limit, pretty much anything could be sent across that command channel. SMS is born!

Now the key here, is to remember that this channel is also used to initiate calls. If everybody is filling this channel up with SMSs, calls cannot be placed resulting in that goddamn annoying "Network Busy" message on your phone.

So, it isn't because they are trying to rape you (not that that isn't true), but because it interferes with actual voice calls taking place over the network.

I can't find the reference but I read that SMS go out with the lowest priority, meaning they will not be delivered if the command channel is full negotiating voice calls or other activity. If this is accurate, then it undermines your claim.

The worst part is that text messaging doesn't actually cost the cell companies that much to send. They tack it on into the extra space in the control channel that the carrier uses already. Hence the character limit. They are sending a certain sized packet anyways, so instead of padding the packet, they add in the info you are sending out and it zips along on the same bandwidth that the cell phone was using anyways.

The people who keep saying "because you pay it" are very accurate. Other competitive services could be developed and deployed, but that would be another device in your pocket, monthly bill to pay (even if it was very small) and corporate relationship to manage.

Phone companies have a deployed infrastructure, access to you as a customer, a device in your pocket, and people keep paying their inflated rates for data.

LOL, you pay $20 for texting a month? You are getting so bent over it's not even funny. Wise up, get aggressive with your phone company, if they won't work with you leave them. That is just absurd that you are paying that much for something that might cost them a dollar a month. I get free long distance, unlimited minutes and unlimited text for $56/month. Don't need internet on a phone, that's what computers are for.

That doesn't have to be by choice. I got free internet flatrate with my phone because the Storm doesn't have WLAN, so Vodafone said "Hell, you'll get free unlimited 3G with this phone because you're awesome and bought it in the first place". I'm still on a cheapo monthly rate though

Its because we are all taught that the 'free market' is a good thing because it brings the costs down through competition. But the reality is nothing like this. Companies charge the maximum amount that they can get away with, and no one company wants to undercut prices because we as consumers simply don't care, or don't notice.

This is precisely the reason why all mobile company price plans are so complex - they are that way on purpose so nobody could possibly price compare - even if a good deal comes along, who would notice? - it's almost impossible to compare!

Yep, most companies are now going with the internet approach, they can change their policy at anytime as long as it's published on the internet/website of company. It is up to you to read your contract from time to time for changes, pure bullshit.

Dump them. Why do you people take this? No one should be paying for text, it's asinine. Also, think about what your company is doing, say you are getting a text from another person on the same carrier, they are charging both of you to send and receive the same messages, it predatory and should be illegal.